Laila Lalami

Barenboim in Ramallah

This bit of news is old by now, but I happened to hear the Moonlight Sonata this morning on the radio, so I decided to blog about it. Daniel Barenboim, the famous conductor, has been conducting seminars every year in the Middle-East, which he co-sponsors with Edward Said, himself a gifted pianist. This week in Ramallah, Barenboim defied the ban on travelling to the territories in order to play for Palestinian music students.

The old Steinway grand had seen better days, but when Daniel Barenboim drew the first nostalgic notes of Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata from it today, 200 neatly uniformed Palestinian students froze in delight.
Music, and especially music of this caliber from a live Israeli master, is not something that has often graced young lives more wrapped up in the daily misery of curfews, roadblocks, dangers and hatreds.

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on Saturday, September 14th, 2002 at 6:11 pm and is filed under miscellaneous.
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